Sarkozy’s climbdown after bike boasting
NICOLAS SARKOZY, the leader of France’s Centre-Right opposition party, has invited mockery with a boast about his cycling prowess.
He claimed that his bodyguards had trouble keeping up with him on the hill climbs even as it emerged that one had been airbrushed out of a photograph to make it look as though he had left them behind.
Sarkozy, 60, who has long used his cycling to cast himself as a man of action, told Le Parisien magazine that he rides 3000km during his holidays every year.
He especially enjoys the challenge of climbing, he said.
‘‘Suffering, competition, beauty. I love the mountains,’’ he said. ‘‘On the bike I get bored on the flat. It has to go up.’’
Boasting of his strength, he said: ‘‘The policemen who join me have to train in July. Otherwise, even though good sportsmen, they would struggle to climb.
‘‘And I won’t wait for them, it’s not in my temperament.’’
To the embarrassment of the former president, who is campaigning for re-election in 2017, the French media discovered that a security officer had been erased from the photograph of Sarkozy riding in the Mediterranean hills that was used by Le Parisien for the cover of its magazine.
The cover shows a solitary Sarko, facing the hill climb alone.
Marianne magazine found the original, which showed the police officer pedalling beside Sarkozy – and looking less puffed than the grimacing former president.
‘‘Curiously, the non-retouched photograph shows a surprising contrast between Sarkozy’s tense face and the apparent relaxed look of the bodyguard, who seems to almost to be riding on the flat,’’ said a blog on the website of the news magazine L’Obs.
Sarkozy’s claims also caused mirth on Twitter and other social networks because his 3000km boast would mean that he rides 85km on each day of his five-week annual holidays.
His claim to burn 1800 calories on each ride would put his metabolism on the level of a highperformance professional, said one analyst.
Naturally, the ever-boastful leader of the Republicans party drew a parallel between cycling and politics.
‘‘Never give up. talent.
‘‘It’s about perseverance and resistance,’’ he said, adding: ‘‘I do not like to show off.’’
It’s not about
Nicolas Sarkozy on cycling